IBM Corp. is pushing the envelope on hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence with a number of key announcements early Tuesday ahead of its Think 2021 event, chiefly aimed at accelerating its customer’s digital transformation strategies.

One of the main highlights of today’s announcements is a new Auto SQL capability within IBM’s Cloud Pak for Data offering that automates data access and management without needing to move it first. The company also unveiled a new, AI-based tool for modernizing applications and workloads to run in hybrid cloud environments, plus new AI capabilities in Watson and advancements that should help to scale up quantum computing to more use cases.

Available Tuesday, the new AutoSQL capability for IBM Cloud Pak for Data is a big deal because it enables companies to automate access, integration and management of their data no matter where it resides, the company said. IBM said it’s addressing one of the most critical pain points customers face as they attempt to reduce the complexity of curating data for AI. Furthermore, IBM said, it helps eliminate the high expense of moving data around.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data is a fully integrated data and AI platform that helps companies collect, organize and analyze data easily, with a view to using it to power AI applications. AutoSQL is described as a “breakthrough capability” that automates complex data management tasks by using AI to discover, understand, access and protect data that’s distributed across multiple clouds and on-premises environments.

The key advantage AutoSQL brings is that the data doesn’t need to be moved anywhere, IBM said, noting that previous attempts to integrate data silos and multiple clouds have always relied on physical data movement. The company said that’s critical: Its new Global AI Adoption Index 2021 found nearly 90% of businesses reported that being able to run their AI projects wherever the data resides is key to AI adoption.

AutoSQL for Cloud Pak for Data has other advantages too, notably speed. IBM claims it uses the same query engine across all data sources, including data warehouses, data lakes and streaming data, to provide answers to distributed queries eight times faster than alternate methods. It also reduces complexity, says IBM, because it can weave data from different sources into a single, unified view.

IBM said AutoSQL is complemented by two additional capabilities in Cloud Pak for Data, namely AutoCatalog, which is an AI-powered brain that helps to automate how data is discovered and classified to help companies maintain a real-time catalog of their distributed data assets. Meanwhile, AutoPrivacy helps to automate data privacy policies using AI.

IBM Mono2Micro

Although data management is one of the biggest roadblocks in the way of hybrid cloud adoption, it’s not the only one. Enterprises also need to be able to run their applications in multiple cloud environments, and IBM has worked hard to help make that happen too.

The company announced a key update for its WebSphere Hybrid Edition, a suite of tools that’s used to build and run Java-based business applications and websites. Mono2Micro, based on an AI engine developed by IBM Research, works by scanning and analyzing applications to provide recommendations so developers can quickly rewrite them to run in hybrid cloud environments.

Essentially, what it does is makes it easier for developers to create container-based versions of their legacy apps. An enterprise can use Mono2Micro to make it easier to decide which applications to move to the cloud, which ones to containerize and which to leave on-premises.

Traditionally, refactoring applications to run in software containers requires a complete, manual restructuring of the existing codebase. That’s extremely time-consuming and also very error prone, which is why IBM is using AI to do that task instead. It uses machine learning and deep learning to analyze large enterprise Java applications and produce two alternative refactoring options for an application, and then automatically produce code to help deploy the application as microservices with less rewriting.

Watson Orchestrate

The company’s AI expertise is the basis of another interesting new tool announced at Think 2021, namely Watson Orchestrate. Available in preview now with IBM’s suite of Automation Cloud Paks, it’s a new service that relies on natural language processing skills to interact with collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams in natural language.

The service also connects to popular business applications such as Salesforce, SAP and Workday to help workers perform routine tasks more quickly. Examples include sending emails, scheduling meetings, and also more important jobs such as preparing a proposal or a business plan.

Watson Orchestrate uses an AI engine that automatically selects and sequences packaged skills needed to perform a task. Then it connects with applications, tools, data and history on the fly, the company explained.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that Mono2Micro and Watson Orchestrate were the most interesting innovations to come out of IBM at Think 2021.

“They have tremendous potential to drive up people’s productivity, and with that enable enterprise acceleration,” Mueller said. “It’s clear that the IBM innovation engine is running at a higher speed again, with most of it coming straight to market from IBM Research.”

Maximo Mobile

IBM is also trying to innovate in the world of the “internet of things” with the launch of its new Maximo Mobile platform. Based on IBM’s Maximo asset management platform, it’s meant to make life easier for technicians and engineers who manage physical assets and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, production lines, power plants and refineries.

The platform revolves around an easy-to-use interface and uses AI to discover and generate insights on operational data from those assets. That enables technicians to keep everything running more efficiently, IBM said.

Project CodeNet

AI serves as the foundation of a new open-source project IBM announced too, one that aims to understand and translate software code more efficiently. Project CodeNet is a massive open-source dataset that’s comprised of 14 million code samples and 500 million lines of code in 55 programming languages.

CodeNet is designed to tackle three key challenges, IBM said. First, it’s aimed at automatically translating one code into another. Second, it tries to identify any overlaps and similarities among different codes. Finally, it can help customize code constraints based on a developer’s specific needs and parameters to help them identify the best code to use for a particular project.

IBM said Project CodeNet is the world’s largest and most differentiated dataset in its class. It will serve as a valuable benchmark for source-to-source translation and transitioning legacy codebases to modern code languages, the company added.

Analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. told SiliconANGLE that the key takeaway from IBM Think this year is that the company is doubling down on AI and hybrid cloud and actually finding ways for them to work for its customers.

“To date, many of the AI-related initiatives we have seen are focused on large-scale projects that will take years to sort out,” King said. “So it’s vital that IBM is announcing workable AI-enabled solutions and services, such as the AutoSQL capabilities in Cloud Pak for Data that massively speed data search processes, Watson Orchestrate for automating and improving the efficiency of business processes, and Project CodeNet for enabling AI to understand and translate code.”

Qiskit Runtime

While hybrid cloud and AI are the subject of IBM’s immediate focus, the company is not neglecting the future. IBM believes that quantum computing will play a big part in the future of enterprise information technology. To make sure that happens, it announced its Qiskit Runtime software that’s designed to help developers use quantum software faster and more easily.

Hosted in the cloud, Qiskit Runtime is able to boost the speed of quantum circuits, which are the building blocks of quantum computers, by up to 120 times, the company said. That should ensure that complex calculations such as chemical modeling and financial risk analysis, which are often cited as prime use cases for quantum computing, can be performed in a matter of hours rather than several weeks.

“It’s good to see IBM is continuing to deliver highly sophisticated, future-focused innovations such as Qiskit Runtime for substantially boosting the speeds of quantum circuits, following its new two-nanometer silicon process announced a few days ago,” King said.

Partner ecosystem

Besides today’s raft of updates, IBM found time to announce some additions its partner ecosystem, including new competencies, skills training and benefits that it says are aimed at helping its partners to succeed. For example, the company has created a new competency framework that it says will enable partners to showcase their expertise, technical validation and sales success in areas such as hybrid cloud infrastructure, automation and security.

The company also expanded availability of its Cloud Engagement Fund, which provides partners with cloud credits and technical resources to help migrate customer’s workloads to hybrid cloud environments.

Photo: IBM